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140 which controlled the Venetian chandelier. But she did not press it. She left the boudoir in darkness.

For she was familiar with every stick of furniture about the place. She knew the exact location of the great, carved, crimson-and-gold Spanish renaissance day bed between the window and the fireplace, the big buhl table in the center of the room, the smaller one, covered with a mass of bric-à-brac, between the two windows, the low divan running along the south wall and overlapping toward the fireplace, the three chairs at odd angles, the four little tabourets, and, in the northeast corner, the Chinese screen, inlaid with ivory and lac and jade, behind which she kept a small liquor chest. She knew the room, every inch of it, and could move about it, in spite of the darkness, like a cat.

The Thing, on the other hand, whatever it was, would find many pitfalls in the cluttered-up boudoir if it tried to get rambunctious.

These latter were the exact words with which Diana Manning expressed the thought to herself; in this very moment of awe and hatred. Remember—she was born and bred on the east side. Of course, since those days of sooty, sticky, grimy tenement chrysalis, she had learned to broaden her a's